By Sarah Kladler
I attended the first session of the Creative Time Summit in Washington DC. The Summit was a three day gathering of artists, curators, politicians, and social change agents who met to discuss the overlap between art, politics, and social action. A variety of different speakers, of various careers and ethnic backgrounds, performed and presented throughout the conference. These speakers, some local and others from locations across the globe, discussed how social change and art could potentially reshape the political arena.
The first day of the Summit was divided into three sections: Occupy Power, Do It Yourself, and Under Siege. Occupy Power brought to light the impact grassroots social justice movements have on politics. Presenters during this session discussed how they were reexamining current local and global political structures to come up with new alternatives and redistributions of power. The second section began after a lunch break. In Do It Yourself, speakers informed the audience of their own artistic and political practices that “produce their own economic and cultural reality”. The second section led into the third, Under Siege. Under Siege addressed current international social movements that have fought and are continuing to bring to light inequality and systematic violence. In addition to artists and curators, Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement spoke as well.
My favorite speaker during the Summit was Peter Svarzbein. Svarzbein is an artist and City Representative of El Paso, Texas who ran for council after creating the “El Paso Transnational Trolley Project” while he was in graduate school. As an artist, Svarzbein received a grant to renovate old street cars that used to run across the Mexican border and use them for an inter-city trolley route. However, Syarzbein was unable to convince legislators to allow the street cars to cross the border, so he took matters into his own hands and ran for city council. He is currently working on introducing new legislation to reintroduce the original Juarez-El Paso trolley line. Syarzbein is a perfect example of how artists can transform their role and make a change within their communities.
I enjoyed attending the Summit and learning more about how artists, curators, and politicians are redrawing the lines between art, social justice, and the political sphere.